Visitors to the Derald H. Ruttenberg Treatment Center first to use app assessing patient satisfaction

New York, NY

– July 31, 2013 /Press Release/ ––

In an effort to better assess patient satisfaction, The Mount Sinai Medical Center has launched a real-time patient-feedback survey tool-RateMyHospital® for cancer patients receiving treatment in the Derald H. Ruttenberg Treatment Center. The tool went live on Monday, July 15, and so far, scores of patients have been providing feedback in real-time. It is accessible on smartphones and via any mobile web browser.

Traditional patient-satisfaction scores are based on paper surveys that are sent to patients after they have left the facility. RateMyHospital helps health care providers get real-time patient feedback that is essential in assessing and improving patient care. Patients fill out the online survey in real-time as it is delivered via text message.

“As patients fill out their paperwork at the Ruttenberg Treatment Center, we ask them to provide us with a cell phone number,” said Randall F. Holcombe, MD, Medical Director of the Ruttenberg Treatment Center, which offers comprehensive treatment programs for all cancers. “From there, we send them a text message asking them to fill out a brief survey on their smartphone. So far, the response has been outstanding. We get several-fold more responses than seen with traditional paper-based mail surveys.”

Patients answer twelve questions with a 5-star rating system, with 5 being the best value. Questions inquire about the patient’s ability to get an appointment, office wait times, physician or office staff availability by phone, and cleanliness of the facility.

Mount Sinai is planning to roll out RateMyHospital in all clinical areas in the future. “This is just one tool to help establish a direct line to patients in our community in our ongoing efforts to provide exceptional medical care,” said Dr. Holcombe. "Importantly, this tool is simple and easy for patients to use and it provides us with immediate feedback so that we can make any changes necessary to improve the patient experience in nearly real time."

The new tool was developed by Quality Reviews, a software company that creates proprietary products to help health care organizations capture and analyze real-time patient feedback. “We have always valued, solicited, and welcomed patient feedback,” says Edward Shin, MD, Chief Executive Officer of Quality Reviews and a physician-entrepreneur who created the app. “This tool allows patients to give real-time feedback, which makes sense in the current digital age.”

Dr. Shin, who developed the app, has over 12 years experience building health care IT businesses.

About The Mount Sinai Medical Center
The Mount Sinai Medical Center encompasses both The Mount Sinai Hospital and Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Established in 1968, the Icahn School of Medicine is one of the leading medical schools in the United States, with more than 3,400 faculty in 32 departments and 14 research institutes. It ranks among the top 20 medical schools both in National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding and by U.S. News & World Report. The Mount Sinai Hospital, founded in 1852, is a 1,171-bed tertiary- and quaternary-care teaching facility and one of the nation’s oldest, largest and most-respected voluntary hospitals. In 2012, U.S. News & World Report ranked The Mount Sinai Hospital 14th on its elite Honor Roll of the nation’s top hospitals based on reputation, safety, and other patient-care factors.